I allow myself to address you personally, MK Ram Ben Barak, and tell you that you are right.
Right in your anger, insult, and even rage.
Miri Regev took a lost and ugly expression, which must be kept for the worst of our enemies - and certainly not for you, who gave all your years to defend the country.
There is no greater lover of Israel than you.
And having said these basic things, I want to ask you a request.
It's a bit unusual to do that over the pages of a newspaper, but as they say today in slang, "flow with me for a moment."
I ask that for one moment you restrain this anger, that you try for a moment to re-experience the refined emotion that washed over you when you were slapped in the face with such disgust, arrogance and so deep contempt.
This feeling of hurt and burning in the stomach when we marked you as an enemy from within, as "not ours", as someone who has no value for his existence, his actions, his contribution, his involvement, his opinions, his political conscience.
Can you recreate this bitter and shaky feeling?
Because that is exactly, but exactly, what the masses, hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of Israelis feel in Israel, at least once a week, if not more than that, when your coalition members and party leaders open their mouths and speak.
And this week, Ben Barak, things have reached a peak that even you will not be able to deny.
MK Miri Regev, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
A special, ceremonial and official meeting, in memory of the late Prime Minister of us all, the late Yitzhak Rabin. Both are part of the great Israeli struggle. Not between right and left, but between people who believe in democracy and people who try to destroy it. "
Do you understand what this means?
Can you understand what your party leader is saying to a huge public in the State of Israel?
Because if this sounds a bit vague or open to interpretation, Lapid made sure that no one would have difficulty understanding: "This was the election, not right and left - but for and against democracy. Those who want to unite the people against those who want to dismantle it ... our government "It is a government of the citizens of Israel who have decided to save democracy ... The State of Israel is being taken over by forces of anti-democratic darkness. Rabin's assassination has been an assassination of Israeli democracy.
Government meeting, Photo: Amos Ben Gershom / GPO
Supporters of the national camp, Likud voters and bloc parties that supported Netanyahu hear that they are not Democrats. That they are the enemies of democracy. That they gave their vote to assassinate democracy. That they are the successors of Yigal Amir. We hear from their alternate prime minister that they wanted to dismantle the people, that they are anti-democratic darkness, that they have saved the country from them.
And you know what, Ram Ben Barak? They are not like you. There are no journalists beside them who will severely condemn the harsh words and sue for their insult, except perhaps two or three illuminating lighthouses that are themselves under a relentless attack of delegitimization. They are not like you, Ram Ben Barak, because they are already used to it. They are so used to it that they have heard that they are "shit" and "Erdogan" voters. In fact, they keep hearing from your government that their representatives in the Knesset are "opposition to the state" (a new breed of haters of Israel). They hear endlessly how much they, and their representatives, are non-state (i.e. unworthy of status), and how much they have “stolen” the state, destroyed normalcy, destroyed sanity, and left a sick state that needs to be healed. Yes, they also once heard that they are "black" and that you are "white".
Indirectly and directly, they are repeatedly accused of destroying the country.
Whenever one of your coalition representatives mentions that "they are here to repair" and "repair the ruins," they expect an indictment for their part in destroying the country.
But you, Ben Barak, who were in the defense establishment - know the truth.
You know what security reality prevailed here in the damned decade that began with the events of October and the al-Aqsa Intifada, continued with the disengagement and ended with the Second Lebanon War.
And you know what a rare security reality prevailed here in Netanyahu's decade.
You have seen the United States sink into an economic crisis and European countries collapse one by one - while Israelis demonstrate with Shlomo Artzi in State Square over the price of milk and run to invest in real estate in Greece and Portugal.
You have seen waves of terror and swarms of refugees sweeping the world - and with us heaven.
You have seen with your own eyes how de facto isolation gradually becomes a political bloom that matures into strategic peace agreements.
You are boiling, and rightly so, when you are called a hater of Israel, but what emotion is exactly reflected in the messages coming out in bundles from the representatives of your coalition, which is now also devoting super efforts to block the clear political representative of this public in anti-democratic law?
One by one, the leaders of the coalition parties come up and say in a clear voice to the masses of supporters of the Likud and the national camp that their political conscience has no value.
That they should be stopped by law.
Forget for a moment the motivations of Gideon Saar and Naftali Bennett, who are trying to impose themselves on the right in legislation, because nature has endowed them with so little charisma and leadership ability.
Think of the message that this law, along with the Lapid speech, along with the plethora of speeches, tweets and posts by coalition members, conveys to the same Israel that came "from the wrong place."
Yes.
It is a constant message of disgust, and arrogance, and deep contempt.
Just the kind that boiled you down on Wednesday.
Take the Sabbath to think about it.
Maybe from you the healing will begin.